Director - Rahat Shah Kazmi
Cast - Shantanu Maheshwari, Avneet Kaur, Khả Ngân
Duration – 132 minutes
Rating - 2
In Love in Vietnam, director Rahhat Shah Kazmi sets the stage for an emotionally rich cross-cultural romance, but what unfolds is a film thats more aesthetic than authentic, more surface-level poetry than soul-stirring cinema.
At its core, the film tells the story of Manav (Shantanu Maheshwari), torn between his childhood love Simmi (Avneet Kaur) and the mysterious Vietnamese woman Lin (Kha Ngan). Theres a dreamy, almost mythic quality to the setup a boy lost in a foreign land, chasing the shadow of a woman from a photograph. But that premise, however promising, never fully materializes into something emotionally resonant.
Instead, were left with longing without context, relationships without real depth, and characters that feel more like ideas than actual people.
Visually, Love in Vietnam is stunning. The cinematography bathes Vietnamese lakes, alleys, and lantern-lit streets in a romantic glow. The soundtrack particularly Jeena Nahi and Pehli Nazar has moments of real charm and melancholy. But these are fleeting highs. The film leans heavily on atmosphere, trying to substitute feeling with framing.
The narrative moves too quickly in the first act, offering very little grounding for the audience to invest in Manav and Simmis relationship. And when Lin enters the picture, her mystique is intriguing but not earned. Theres a sense that the film wants to evoke deep longing and bittersweet memory, but the emotional scaffolding just isnt strong enough to support it.
Shantanu Maheshwari does his best to bring sincerity to Manavs internal conflict, but the script rarely gives him the space to fully flesh it out. Avneet Kaur gets more to work with in the second half, delivering a few emotionally charged scenes that nearly break through the fog. Kha Ngan, while graceful and enigmatic, is underwritten her character more symbol than person.
Veteran actors like Raj Babbar and Farida Jalal add some gravitas, but even their presence feels somewhat ornamental, never fully integrated into the heart of the story.
Adapted from a Turkish novel, the film clearly aims to blend cultures and explore universal themes of memory, love, and loss. But despite its ambition, Love in Vietnam falters in execution. The dialogues often feel over-explained, robbing scenes of subtlety. Several key moments meant to be profound come off as forced or overly choreographed.
Theres also a sense of emotional detachment throughout. The film tells us that these characters are heartbroken, torn, and haunted by the past but it rarely shows us convincingly.
Love in Vietnam wants to be a meditative, poetic romance the kind that stays with you long after the credits roll. Unfortunately, while it looks the part, it rarely feels it. Emotionally hollow and narratively uneven, it ends up being a missed opportunity.
Its a film that aches to be profound but only manages to be pretty. A beautiful frame with very little inside it poignant in idea, but disappointingly inert in execution.